When first meeting Jacob Slosberg and Amy Frye, you might not be shocked to learn that they are farmers. Though young for the job, they look the part; they work too hard not to. You won’t often catch them out of their flannels and boots. Running an independent organic farm as large as theirs is no joke. They are the founders, owners, and operators of Boldly Grown Farm in Bow, WA, and one of our main suppliers of local, organic vegetables.

Amy and Jacob both have deep roots in the sustainable agriculture movement. Born in Seattle, Jacob grew up an avid outdoorsman. He spent much of his youth kayaking, backpacking, and skiing the Northwest. His appreciation of the natural world led to an abiding interest in sustainability, which in turn led him to examine the links between sustainable farming methods and healthy wildlands. Growing up in Minnesota, Amy was similarly enamored with the outdoors and spent many of her formative years helping out on her grandparents’ farm. They both decided to go to school for agriculture at the University of British Columbia, where they met and began dating. While there, they managed seven acres of crops with three greenhouses and 200 chickens, supplying not only the campus kitchens with produce but local restaurants and a CSA, as well.

Traveling back and forth between Seattle and Canada on breaks, they’d considered the Skagit Valley as a possible farm site. At the time, Viva Farms, our local organic farm incubator, was in its nascence. In 2014, Jacob was at the Washington Tilth Conference, where he met Ray DeVries, owner and second-generation farmer of Ralph’s Greenhouse. If Anne Schwartz of Blue Heron Farm is our local matriarch of organic and sustainable agriculture, then Ray is probably the patriarch. He mentioned to Jacob a job opening at Osbourne Seeds in Mt. Vernon. Between that and the possibilities offered by Viva, Amy and Jacob made the move to Skagit after graduating from UBC.

Jacob and Amy started farming at Viva Farms as Boldly Grown in 2015. They came and introduced themselves to me early on and asked which niches in the local produce supply chain they might be able to fill. We all thought that focusing on storage crops was a wise strategy, as the Co-op already had a number of strong local farms covering many of our needs through the season proper. That year, Boldly Grown farmed a single acre at Viva Farms in Burlington. The following year they farmed two, and the acreage nearly doubled every year thereafter. By 2021, they were farming 25 acres, with fields, pack sheds, greenhouses, and an office scattered between five sites. They were also raising two small children; Leo is now six, Ayla is two and a half. It was time for a home base.

In midsummer of 2021, Boldly Grown officially moved to an old 58-acre dairy farm in Bow. It had been derelict for some time. Five feet of weeds covered what property wasn’t occupied by collapsing barns. The one benefit of having been vacant for so long, is that they were able to put the land immediately into organic production. It took a lot of work to pull off, but this year, they farmed 28 of the 40 or so tillable acres, plus five acres of rye – their first-ever grain crop. The land includes eight acres of riparian barrier on the Samish River, which provides habitat, shields the river from heat, and acts as a groundwater filter. To get it done, they had to pull down approximately 50,000 square feet of decrepit barns and outbuildings, convert the sturdiest barn into a pack shed, construct a greenhouse, add in buried irrigation, and renovate the house on the property. They also just put in a retail farmstand, which they hope to keep open year-round.

There’s a lot yet to be done; they’ve brought in an architect to design an additional pack shed with on-site winter crop storage, and they will keep clearing more land to put into production. Though there are already 275 subscribers, there’s room for their winter CSA to grow, and Amy hopes to have enough laying hens soon to keep the stand supplied with eggs.

Boldly Grown has been one of our key suppliers since 2016, and we are so excited for them to be able to keep growing. At this point, we are the only grocery store they deliver to directly, and they plan to keep it that way. “When we say the Co-op, there’s only one co-op we have in mind!” laughed Jacob.

“Finally, we can put down roots, and we’re excited it’s in the Skagit.” Amy added: “We are able to farm in the way that got us excited about farming in the first place, and we’re trying to pace ourselves; we’re going to be here awhile.”